ESPN March Poker Player Rankings Released

Tuesday, ESPN.com released the March version of “The Nuts,” its ranking of the top ten poker players in the world. The list does not simply rank the best living players, but rather aims to determine who is currently playing the best poker. All variations of poker are considered – live and online, tournaments and cash games. Poker News Daily’s own Dan Cypra is one of the members of the voting panel, along with ESPN.com writers Gary Wise, Andrew Feldman, and Poker News Daily Guest Columnist Bernard Lee, Bluff Magazine’s Editor-In-Chief Lance Bradley and Senior Writer Jessica Welman, PokerNews Editor-In-Chief Matthew Parvis, and tournament reporter Don Peters, and PokerRoad’s Court Harrington.

This is the fourth month for “The Nuts” and for the fourth month, the seemingly peerless Phil Ivey sits atop the rankings. He did not have any significant live poker tournament success in February, but his cash game prowess is still second to none. While the rankings are a measure of who is the best “right now,” the panel’s focus is not so narrow as to limit evaluation to just a single month. Ivey gets credit for his outstanding results in the months leading up to the most recent vote.

Jason Mercier, one of the best players that the general poker public may have never heard of, moved up one spot to number two. In February, the Floridian made the quarterfinals of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship and placed third in the WPT L.A. Poker Classic’s High-Roller event. When he found out that he had climbed to the second spot, Mercier was excited, telling ESPN.com, “It’s pretty cool [to be No. 2]. I think that I’ve reached as high as I can go. I don’t think I have any chance of beating out Ivey.”

The biggest riser among last month’s top ten was Tom “durrrr” Dwan, who was number eight in February and is now number three. Dwan doesn’t have any notches in his tournament belt recently, but he has been destroying the online cash games, as he usually does. He made $2.7 million in the month leading up to the current vote, much of it off Patrik Antonius in the Durrrr Challenge.

Speaking of Antonius, his poor cash results resulted in him dropping in the rankings from second to fifth.

New to “The Nuts” this month are Cole South and Scott Seiver. South has been tearing up cash games to the tune of $2.5 million in profit this year, while Seiver won the L.A. Poker Classic High-Roller event and placed fourth in the North American Poker Tour (NAPT) Venetian High-Roller Bounty Shootout.

Dropping from the rankings were Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier and Jeffrey Lisandro, who were ninth and tenth, respectively, in February.

ESPN.com “The Nuts” Poker Player Rankings – March 2010